Business leaders across the world have woken up to the power of OKRs – Objectives and Key Results. At Auxin OKR, we have seen a sharp rise in enquiries from businesses seeking advice about OKRs since John Doerr launched his book, Measure What Matters in 2017. 

In his book, Doerr refers extensively to another three-letter acronym, which has generated less attention but is equally important. CFRs – Conversations, Feedback and Recognition. 


It is the conversations that OKRs stimulate that make them transformative. Couple this with honest feedback and authentic recognition of tasks people are accomplishing daily, and CFRs become the key to unlocking the power of OKRs.


If you’ve read Work Rules by Laszlo Bock (Ex Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google), you will recall he talks about how OKRs impacted the HR department during his time at Google. It seems every business guru needs to coin their own three-letter acronym, and Lazlo is no exception. He talks passionately in the book about MTV or Mission, Transparency, Voice.


MTV shapes how Googlers interact with OKRs within the company. 


Understanding the mission, seeing how every department connects through transparent communications empowers people to voice their concerns and ideas. This open approach to managing people was vital to OKR success within the search giant.


Continuous review
Annual appraisals will gradually become less important as more and more companies shift to providing feedback continuously, creating a perfect environment in which to embed OKRs. It also reduces the temptation for employees to game the system by putting in a bigger effort one quarter before appraisal time. This behaviour is somewhat inevitable if reviews are directly connected to compensation.


Instead of administering and facilitating staff appraisals, the human resources teams of tomorrow face different challenges. They will need to develop internal training programmes and create their Conversations, Feedback and Recognition guidelines and best practice documents alongside their OKR knowledge base.


What might this involve? Well, it could include training staff to deliver constructive criticism or guidance on how to communicate meaningful praise. All skills progressive human resource professionals are becoming increasingly familiar with. 


Achieving ambitious strategic goals
OKRs are a great way to introduce agile management practices into any organisation that wants to achieve ambitious strategic goals in today’s knowledge-based economy. Still, you need engaged and motivated individuals to make it happen.


CFRs encourage people to think about how the work they do, impacts the success of others. An OKR culture comes from people talking to one another and buying into the organisation’s overall vision. Google equate it to behaving like a founder.


OKRs empower people to act with autonomy while ensuring their actions align with the business’s strategic direction.